The One Who Got Away is Back

Present 4 ♡ Surprise in Tropicana

"Welcome back to bullshit central," Marisol Gonzalez told me as soon as I stepped into the office that Monday.

She and I were the two idiots who reported directly to our boss, an asshole who went by the name of Jean Paul Mercier. Which we all knew to be an artistic name that forced people into asking him, "Like Jean Paul Gautier?" He loved it, it made him feel important, and I'd never met anyone in my life with as much of a need to feel superior as him.

Only the CEO of the company knew Jean Paul's real name, but Marisol and I secretly called him Mr. Diapers. Since he was so full of shit.

If that weren't enough, the fifty some strong company wasn't doing so well in the books. For a year and a half there had been a lot of red on them, and our CEO and acting CFO Angela Fernandez had spent the best part of this year out looking for investors. And we all knew what that meant: if none were found, heads were going to roll.

Before I'd left for the Keys last week, we'd been informed of an important announcement today. I'd begun sending out resumes just in case.

"It's great to be back," I told her as I dumped my bag under my work bench.

This morning I'd made a concerted effort to look good. I figured if I was going to get fired from my second job at a fashion company after busting my ass to make its vision come true, I was going to go in style in a fluttery burgundy dress of my own design that made me look like I was disappearing in a cloud of smoke as I walked away. I'd put on a full face of makeup and styled my hair in artful waves around my face. Fashion was armor, and I needed defense today.

As she and I headed over to the kitchenette to get some coffee I asked her, "Any rumors?"

"Only that there's going to be a big change." She shrugged and looked around, which prompted me to do the same. "That's what I heard Mr. Diapers discuss on the phone with Angela. Whatever that means."

I cringed. "That doesn't sound good."

Marisol's lips made a downward u shape. "Change rarely is."

"Let's get to work everybody," Mr. Diapers said as he stormed into the main office area, as though people weren't doing just that already. "We have only a couple of productive hours before the big announcement, so chop chop."

If only he would be the one to get the chop chop.

Marisol and I dragged our feet back to our work benches and my brain struggled to catch up to the fact that it wasn't the weekend anymore. I was back to the grind time, prime time. And by that I meant grinding prime neurons trying to make Jean Paul's ridiculous design ideas fit into the laws of physics of our 3D world, in the crazy timelines that our customers wanted. That was basically what my job consisted of, even despite the fact that I was a senior designer and that my own ideas should be part of what drove this company's path to success.

My colleague was wrong, change wasn't always bad. It was exactly what we needed right now—to change Jean Paul to a different company so I could do my thing.

Unfortunately I had a feeling that wasn't going to happen, which was why regardless of today's news I'd begun looking for a different job. I needed to get into another company that paid a decent wage and had good benefits until I got close to paying off my student loans. Once that happened, I'd be able to have the flexibility of starting my own business—with a damn good credit that would get me a bank loan for it, that was.

The one silver lining of this place was that Jean Paul was basically the only person who sucked. Everybody else was pretty cool and we were all united under the banner of hating the head designer. He at least did that much, bond the team through the common spite.